Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101123
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$393,359.00
Summary
Through their eyes: Rethinking the role of information operations in counterinsurgency scholarship and strategy. Western counterinsurgency forces regularly lose the 'information battle' to militarily and economically inferior insurgent forces. This project explores why and how insurgent adversaries often prove superior in shaping the perceptions of local populations and winning their support. Through case studies of East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, the project identifies the key strategic pilla ....Through their eyes: Rethinking the role of information operations in counterinsurgency scholarship and strategy. Western counterinsurgency forces regularly lose the 'information battle' to militarily and economically inferior insurgent forces. This project explores why and how insurgent adversaries often prove superior in shaping the perceptions of local populations and winning their support. Through case studies of East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, the project identifies the key strategic pillars in insurgent information operations in order to critically analyse and revise the role of information operations in counterinsurgency theory and practice. This research will advance scholarly understanding of the psychosocial dynamics of influence during conflict and challenge dominant trends in counterinsurgency theory and practice.Read moreRead less
Parenting in an unsteady world across nations. Overinvolved and overcontrolling parenting seems to be on the rise as families are confronted with an unsteady world. This project aims to investigate how overparenting affects youth's achievements and well-being as they transition out of secondary school, and will isolate societal and cultural determinants of overparenting. This project will generate new knowledge on family influences on youth's progress, and will substantially contribute to an exi ....Parenting in an unsteady world across nations. Overinvolved and overcontrolling parenting seems to be on the rise as families are confronted with an unsteady world. This project aims to investigate how overparenting affects youth's achievements and well-being as they transition out of secondary school, and will isolate societal and cultural determinants of overparenting. This project will generate new knowledge on family influences on youth's progress, and will substantially contribute to an existing multinational study to identify macro social-cultural determinants of overcontrolling parenting. Expected outcomes are the generation of new knowledge relevant to family policy and practice within Australia, growth in cross-national collaborations, and new theories and methods.Read moreRead less
The effect of unconventional advocates on public support for climate policy. This project aims to discover whether the presence of unconventional climate advocates in public debate can foster broad-based support for climate policy in Australia. Unconventional advocates include political conservatives, farmers, resource industry workers, and businesspeople. The project expects to generate new knowledge about the role of intersectional social identities in contentious policy debates. Expected outc ....The effect of unconventional advocates on public support for climate policy. This project aims to discover whether the presence of unconventional climate advocates in public debate can foster broad-based support for climate policy in Australia. Unconventional advocates include political conservatives, farmers, resource industry workers, and businesspeople. The project expects to generate new knowledge about the role of intersectional social identities in contentious policy debates. Expected outcomes of this project include evidence-based insights on how to reduce social division about climate policy. This should provide significant benefits such as guidance for policy actors for how to overcome social cleavages to implement climate policy, with relevance to other contentious policy domains.Read moreRead less
Public responses to alternative water supplies: the role of risk, beliefs and identity. The research aims to understand why community members accept or reject alternative water supplies options such as recycled water. The project significantly advances knowledge about this issue and provides important information to inform risk management and communication programs.
Pathways to social cohesion and social change: opinion-based groups and the dynamic formation of identities. This project will update the understanding of political conflict by exploring groups based around shared opinions. It will show that groups are likely to be more successful in their political campaigns when they tie their causes to national and other positive identifies.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120101029
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Responding to humanitarian emergencies: mass generosity as collective action. The world has witnessed a string of disasters that, at times, appear to have pushed the human capacity for generosity to its limits. This ground-breaking psychological research explores ways to help government and nongovernment agencies to build broader support in Australian society for efforts to respond to humanitarian emergencies.
Locating loss from climate change in everyday places. This project aims to investigate loss within the contexts of fire, drought and flooding in Western Australia. The project’s innovative approach will reveal how community members in rural and urban places make value trade-offs and decisions over desirable futures. The project’s expected outcomes will provide insights into acceptable and intolerable losses, and grief and hope, in familiar places. The findings will contribute an analysis of com ....Locating loss from climate change in everyday places. This project aims to investigate loss within the contexts of fire, drought and flooding in Western Australia. The project’s innovative approach will reveal how community members in rural and urban places make value trade-offs and decisions over desirable futures. The project’s expected outcomes will provide insights into acceptable and intolerable losses, and grief and hope, in familiar places. The findings will contribute an analysis of community resilience in the face of socio-economic and environmental threats, and inclusive planning for place-based adaptation.Read moreRead less
Facilitating the attainment of difficult goals: From theory to intervention. Being persistent in pursuing an important goal is glorified in society. People, however, often need to be strategic in their goal pursuits. A series of lab and field studies will aim to test how helping individuals to realise early in their goal striving whether their goal is attainable or not, can support them in making the right decision (persist with, abandon, or change the goal). The project will make novel contribu ....Facilitating the attainment of difficult goals: From theory to intervention. Being persistent in pursuing an important goal is glorified in society. People, however, often need to be strategic in their goal pursuits. A series of lab and field studies will aim to test how helping individuals to realise early in their goal striving whether their goal is attainable or not, can support them in making the right decision (persist with, abandon, or change the goal). The project will make novel contributions to theories of motivation and goal regulation. It will also have significant public benefit as it will provide the necessary evidence for the development of brief interventions that maximise the efficient use of individuals’ limited resources, facilitating individual and societal productivity and well-being.Read moreRead less
Harm inflation: Making sense of concept creep . This project aims to investigate our culture’s rising preoccupation with harm and clarify its causes and consequences. It will apply innovative computational tools for understanding cultural change which will create new knowledge of how concepts of harm have broadened their meanings in recent decades. It will explore societal and cultural drivers of these changes and their effects on diverse phenomena including help-seeking, over-diagnosis and pola ....Harm inflation: Making sense of concept creep . This project aims to investigate our culture’s rising preoccupation with harm and clarify its causes and consequences. It will apply innovative computational tools for understanding cultural change which will create new knowledge of how concepts of harm have broadened their meanings in recent decades. It will explore societal and cultural drivers of these changes and their effects on diverse phenomena including help-seeking, over-diagnosis and polarized moral judgment. The project will generate insight into important ongoing social changes and awareness of their positive and negative ramifications. It will provide significant benefits for our understanding of key challenges to mental health and social well-being.Read moreRead less
Australian family diversity: Individual experiences and public attitudes. Whilst Australian families continue to diversify, public perceptions and policies related to families appear entrenched in a normative understanding of family. This project will provide a genealogy of public and policy accounts of Australian families, map public perceptions of a diverse range of family structures and modes of family formation, and identify how differing cohorts of Australian families talk about their famil ....Australian family diversity: Individual experiences and public attitudes. Whilst Australian families continue to diversify, public perceptions and policies related to families appear entrenched in a normative understanding of family. This project will provide a genealogy of public and policy accounts of Australian families, map public perceptions of a diverse range of family structures and modes of family formation, and identify how differing cohorts of Australian families talk about their families. Together, these strands will produce a unified body of knowledge about Australian families that will allow for the identification of factors influencing public perceptions, and thus the development of policy initiatives aimed at recognising family diversity and challenging social norms.Read moreRead less